by Tim Green
Copyright © 2003 by Tim Green
All rights reserved.
Warner Books
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue,
New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.
The Warner Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
First eBook Edition: November 2007
ISBN: 978-0-446-50453-9
Contents
COPYRIGHT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
CHAPTER 79
CHAPTER 80
CHAPTER 81
CHAPTER 82
CHAPTER 83
CHAPTER 84
EPILOGUE
Also by Tim Green
Fiction
Ruffians
Titans
Outlaws
The Red Zone
Double Reverse
The Letter of the Law
The Fourth Perimeter
Nonfiction
The Dark Side of the Game
A Man and His Mother: An Adopted Son’s Search
For my beginning and my end,
my beautiful wife with her radiant smile.
Illyssa, you complete me.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some of the best things in this book, and the book itself, couldn’t have been done without the help of others: my agent, Esther Newberg; my editor, Rick Wolff; the careful reading and constructive criticism of Sara Ann Freed, as well as my parents, Richard and Judy Green; for the tireless questions answered by my friends in the Syracuse Police Department, Inspector Michael Kerwin, Detectives Pete O’Brien, Pete Patnode, and Vernon Thomson; and also all the people at Warner Books, including Larry Kirshbaum, Maureen Egen, Jamie Raab, Dan Ambrosio, Mari Okuda, Chris Barba, and Tina Andreadis.
In addition, a very special thanks to my brother in words and my particular friend Ace Atkins.
I thank you all.
And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the
beast and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they
gnawed their tongues for pain.
Revelation 16:10
CHAPTER 1
Despite the horror of his crime, there was a chance that Eugene Tupp might go free. The legal system was a board game. Right didn’t always prevail. Chance could supersede justice. That’s what Jack Ruskin was afraid of.
A mist hung in the night air, muting the light. Fluorescent street lamps glowed pale blue. The scent of damp concrete and pavement floated up, mixing with the smell of cooked onions blown outside by an unseen kitchen fan somewhere down the side alley. Jack Ruskin lifted a ream of paper from the passenger seat of his Saab convertible. He tucked the bulky package beneath his long raincoat and, with his briefcase in the other hand, stumbled into the Brick Alley Café.
He stepped up onto the dining room floor and surveyed the tables, looking past the inquisitive hostess. Gavin Donohue was in the back, beyond the old wood bar and its high leather chairs, back near the emergency exit. Gavin sat upright beneath a copied Monet. He faced the quiet crowd, a big dark Irishman with the stoic expression of an elected official. He was the D.A. of Nassau County. When he reached for his wineglass, a silver Rolex Submariner flashed on his wrist.
Jack made his way through the mill of waiters and waitresses. They were dressed in white shirts and black bow ties and moved with expedient politeness. When Jack bumped one he turned to excuse himself, jostling a second, tangling his legs, and losing his balance. His papers spilled in a gusher on the hardwood floor.
Jack cursed quietly and knelt down. He thanked the staff and even the other diners who bent down to help him collect his things. Gavin got up and came halfway across the room to help.
“Not the best place for this,” Jack said, rising, his face feeling warm. He adjusted his glasses, looking through the steam and up into Gavin’s face.
“I thought you’d like some dinner,” Gavin said, handing him a transcript sheet from the floor. “Come on, let’s sit down.”
Gavin tucked himself back in the corner, still upright. He was tall and thick, and his thinning dark hair matched his eyes. His cherry face was made serious by a concrete smile. Even years ago, when they’d been young assistants together in the D.A.’s office in Brooklyn, people had been afraid of Gavin.
Jack set his briefcase on the floor beside his chair, then thumped his stack of papers down on the linen tablecloth. He took off his coat, tossed it over the back of his chair, and sat down, loosening his tie.
Jack knew Gavin had something to say to him and he didn’t like the precipitous angle of his old friend’s eyebrows. He felt short of breath. His heart pumped faster. He moved the brass lamp on the table and the flowers to one side. Yellow stick’um flags sprouted from the ream. Jack reached for the one closest to the top, pulling out the page. He wanted to talk, to keep Gavin from talking.
“I’m not telling you what to do,” he said, “but I just don’t think this Unger woman is the right one to be doing the cross on a witness, any witness. Listen to this: ‘Mr. Billings, do you—’”
“Jack.”
“—‘do you think that you might have been mistaken wh—’”
“Jack.”
“You don’t ask someone if they ‘might’ be mistaken on a cross, Gavin,” Jack said. “I don’t want to sound peevish, but goddamn.”
“Jack, stop.”
“What?”
“Just stop.” Gavin’s face turned to stone. He said flatly, “The judge ruled to exclude the van.”
The quiet din of the busy restaurant suddenly sounded to Jack as if it came through a long tube. He saw the rest of the evidence falling like d
ominoes. The van. The blood. The chloroform. The duct tape. Without them, they couldn’t hope to prove that Eugene Tupp was the monster who had abducted his daughter. It was the kidnapping charge that would put that piece of human scum away until he was either harmless or dead. His stomach gave a violent heave.
“I’m sorry,” Gavin was saying. “I wanted to tell you in person.”
“You’re serious,” Jack heard himself say.
“Jack, you of all people knew this was a problem from the start. The cop busted into his garage with a crowbar, for God’s sake,” Gavin said.
“The garage was attached to the house,” Jack said, accenting the point of law.
The search warrant was for Eugene Tupp’s house. In New York State that meant just the house. If the garage was separate, then anything found inside couldn’t be used as evidence. The police should have gone back and gotten another warrant for the garage. They were too anxious.
“Not in the traditional sense maybe,” Jack said, “but the covered walkway, that could be construed—”
“Jack,” Gavin said. “He ruled the van inadmissible. He’s not going to change. You know that.”
Jack stood. He looked around for something. Then he lifted the massive transcript off the table and slammed it down to the floor, where it burst into a flurry of paper. The restaurant went quiet. Heads turned. Gavin backed them all down with his darkest scowl.
“Please,” he said to Jack. “Sit down.”
Jack dug into his pocket and took out a wallet-sized photo of his little girl: Janet. She stared back at him with his own glass blue eyes, her long radiant blond hair—also his—tucked back behind her ears, a small smile on her pretty face. She was only fifteen when it was taken. Only fifteen when Tupp snatched her, and left her with a shattered mind.
“This is my little girl,” Jack said in a husky voice. He slapped the picture down on the table in front of his old friend, rattling the silverware and the ice in the water glasses. A messy purple stain began to spread from the base of Gavin’s wineglass.
Gavin didn’t look.
“I’m going to get the max on the rape charge,” he said. “He’ll do time.”
“Time? How much?” Jack said, his voice rising. Heads began to turn again. “Four years? Five? Six? He did time before. Do you know what he did to her? He shouldn’t do time. He should be strapped to the fucking chair!”
Gavin removed one hand from the edge of the table and grasped the knot of his tie, shaking it loose like a dog tugging on a sock. His face was scarlet now. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead.
“It’s not a perfect system, Jack.” He looked around and lowered his voice into a raspy plea. “This is not my fault.”
Jack felt his anger and disgust peak and then begin to wane. His face drooped. His shoulders sagged. He felt weary, but not weary from being run too hard. He felt instead like a man who had been tied up and beaten with a pipe.
He took a deep tired breath and exhaled his words. They sounded hollow, empty. “I know that, Gavin,” he said, pocketing the photo. “Did I ever tell you why Angela left?”
Gavin cleared his throat and shook his head no.
“She found this rich fat bastard from the club, but that wasn’t really it,” Jack said. “I was supposed to pick Janet up the day he got her.
“This whole thing . . .” Jack said. “It’s not your fault. It’s my fault.”
Jack turned and stumbled back through the crowded tables like a bum. Instead of going straight for the entrance, he turned and banged his way outside through the emergency exit door and into a garbage-strewn alley. An alarm howled after him. Jack didn’t care. He felt Gavin’s hand on his shoulder.
“I’ll get him, Jack,” Gavin said. He handed Jack his briefcase. “I’ll get him for everything I can . . . I wish it were more. I do.”
Jack said nothing. They reached the end of the alley. Gavin stopped. Jack kept going, plodding slowly up the sidewalk through the mist and to his car. The melancholy glow of the streetlight illuminated a parking ticket on his windshield. Jack didn’t bother with it. He drove home with it flapping in protest. It stopped when he reached the assembly of barren trees that lined his cobblestone driveway.
His vast home was illuminated in a haphazard, uneven manner. More than half the exterior lights buried in the yard had burned out months ago. Still, there were enough random beams of light to make out the rich orange brick and the tangled gray tendrils of dormant ivy as they snaked their way delicately across the intricate white trim. The tall mullioned windows were dark and empty. Many of them hid behind ornate wrought-iron balconies. After Jack turned off the car, he sat for a moment in the garage listening to the tick of the engine as it cooled.
Inside the house he found the big handgun he had recently purchased. It lay at the bottom of his underwear drawer under a mess of unfolded clothes. Behind the purchase of the gun was a wild scheme that hadn’t fully taken hold, a rage building up inside him that needed a vent, but now it seemed to him that the gun’s true purpose was more horrible than what he had originally imagined. Or had he known all along in the back of his mind that this was the fate that awaited him?
He descended the long curving staircase with the cool black Glock 9mm in his hand. He found a bottle of Chivas Regal in the kitchen. A pizza box lay open on the table, exposing greasy stains, crumbs, and three chewed-over crusts. In the corner of the sticky floor was a haphazard stack of newspapers. Without thinking Jack filled a tall glass with ice from the machine and then poured in the Scotch until it nearly overflowed. He sat at the kitchen table and began to sip. The ice jiggled noisily in its bath of liquor. Jack’s hands were quivering.
He thought again of Eugene Tupp and what he had done. Without the van and the evidence inside it, the man would spend no more than six years in jail, and given the crowding of New York’s penal system, he was likely to be free in much less. It was so wrong. Tupp would be out and free to attack someone else’s little girl and that ate away at Jack’s insides.
He had taken to drinking Maalox to get him through the day. But Jack believed that he deserved to suffer. After all, this was his fault. Like his wife—his ex-wife—everyone else seemed to know that, too.
The Scotch was nearly gone when he lifted the gun from the tabletop. He brought the barrel to his lips. Tears spilled down Jack’s cheeks. The gun barrel slipped effortlessly into his mouth. He wasn’t bothered by the tangy taste of metal against his tongue. But when the end of the barrel tickled the back of his throat, he had to fight the urge to gag.
Jack felt himself unravel like an industrial spring. His tears were now accompanied by heaving sobs that grew in strength, sobs for Janet, sobs for himself, sobs for the injustice and the futility of life.
He squeezed his eyes shut tight, wondering what it would feel like to die.
Then he pulled the gun from his mouth and slammed it down on the table. If he was mad enough to kill himself, then fine. He could always do that. But he would be damned if he weren’t going to kill someone else first.
CHAPTER 2
Amanda Lee’s eyes burst open at the sound of the radio and she thought of oatmeal. She read in People magazine that Demi Moore cooked oatmeal for her kids. Amanda couldn’t shake the notion that it sounded like a very motherly thing to do, and today she was going to stop thinking about it—whether it was silly or not to do something because Demi Moore did it—and just do it. She flipped the clock radio off and slipped quietly out of bed.
Parker, her husband, moaned and rolled away from her. The ring of faded brown hair that circled his balding head was a wild tangle. Amanda sighed to herself, then kissed her fingertips and placed them gently on the back of his naked head.
She wanted to love him.
She dressed herself in running shorts and a faded Georgetown University soccer T-shirt, crept past the kids’ rooms, and tiptoed downstairs. Six at six. Six miles at six o’clock. That was the resolution she had come up with about a month ago after she’d h
ad to get into a bathing suit at Hershey Park. A small boy had mistaken her for his own mother, and when Amanda had seen the size of the real mother’s rump, she’d decided to get serious. She’d been wanting to get back in shape anyway. In college she was a whip. That all faded after the kids, but she was determined.
At the Bureau women didn’t worry about their looks. It was a man’s world and femininity had no place. That was fine. Amanda didn’t need her looks to compete. Still, there was no reason that with some effort she couldn’t have both. It was like her home life. There was no reason she couldn’t be a successful agent and a good mother. It was like a dual major. It just took effort.
She laced up her shoes on the front steps and stretched a little in the chill morning air. She put on her headset and tuned into Bob Edwards on NPR. Although she’d never met him, she loved Bob. She felt like he could relate. He was understated but smart, and she knew she could count on him to always be up and talking at this ungodly hour.
She ran the streets, passing row after row of squat shingled suburban homes. The sky grew brighter. Finally the day began. The sun came up and she washed away the sweat in the shower. The rest of her family was still asleep, and now she felt good. She looked in the mirror and decided to put on some makeup, not for Parker, but because she was going to see the other mothers today. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with them.
There was never anything to say and she hadn’t had the chance to go to lunch or out for coffee, as so many of them seemed to do. Some of them didn’t work at all. Those who did had nine-to-five jobs. In her family it was Parker who did most of the driving around and the pickups and drop-offs at school. He was the one with the nine-to-five job. He sold heavy equipment for Virginia Supply and when times were good, he could come and go as he pleased.
She pulled on a black Donna Karan sweat suit. She wanted to look good without appearing to have tried. She was neither tall nor short. And while no one would call her ravishing, she knew from the woman at Lord & Taylor that a little makeup applied in the right places brought out the green in her big almond-shaped eyes, the best of her otherwise plain features. Her red hair, too, cut shoulder length, straight and styled, had become an asset—although her more inflexible friends sometimes grew annoyed at the way a certain lock always seemed to curve back across her cheek, sometimes infringing on her eye and begging to be pushed back into place. Occasionally she would wear bright red lipstick to better define her small thin lips, but only on the rare occasions that she and Parker had someplace special to go.